Characterization of Power-to-Phase Conversion in High-Speed P-I-N Photodiodes

Abstract

Fluctuations of the optical power incident on a photodiode can be converted into phase fluctuations of the resulting electronic signal due to nonlinear saturation in the semiconductor. This impacts overall timing stability (phase noise) of microwave signals generated from a photodetected optical pulse train. In this paper, we describe and utilize techniques to characterize this conversion of amplitude noise to phase noise for several high-speed (>10 GHz) InGaAs P-I-N photodiodes operated at 900 nm. We focus on the impact of this effect on the photonic generation of low phase noise 10 GHz microwave signals and show that a combination of low laser amplitude noise, appropriate photodiode design, and optimum average photocurrent is required to achieve phase noise at or below -100 dBc/Hz at 1 Hz offset a 10 GHz carrier. In some photodiodes we find specific photocurrents where the power-to-phase conversion factor is observed to go to zero.

References in corpus (4)

• Ultra-Low Noise Microwave Extraction from Fiber-Based Optical Frequency Comb
• Sub-100 attoseconds optics-to-microwave synchronization
• Advanced bridge (interferometric) phase and amplitude noise measurements
• Flicker noise in high-speed p-i-n photodiodes

Cited by in corpus (21)

• 20 years of developments in optical frequency comb technology and applications
• Generation of Ultrastable Microwaves via Optical Frequency Division
• Coherent Optical Clock Down-Conversion for Microwave Frequencies with 10-18 Instability
• Sub-femtosecond synchronization of microwave oscillators with mode-locked Er-fiber lasers
• An Optical Fibre Pulse Rate Multiplier for Ultra-low Phase-noise Signal Generation
• Analysis of shot noise in the detection of ultrashort optical pulse trains
• Photonic microwave generation with high-power photodiodes
• Amplitude to phase conversion of InGaAs pin photo-diodes for femtosecond lasers microwave signal generation
• Ultralow phase noise microwave generation with an Er:fiber-based optical frequency divider
• Solving the Jitter Problem in Microwave Compressed Ultrafast Electron Diffraction Instruments: Robust Sub-50 fs Cavity-Laser Phase Stabilization
• Ultralow Phase Noise Microwave Generation From Mode-Locked Er-Fiber Lasers With Subfemtosecond Integrated Timing Jitter
• End-to-end topology for fiber comb based optical frequency transfer at the $10^{-21}$ level
• Characterizing a fiber-based frequency comb with electro-optic modulator
• Sub-femtosecond absolute timing precision with a 10 GHz hybrid photonic-microwave oscillator
• Suppression of amplitude-to-phase noise conversion in balanced optical-microwave phase detectors
• Optical Stabilization of a Microwave Oscillator for Fountain Clock Interrogation
• Ultra-low phase-noise microwave generation using a diode-pumped solid-state laser based frequency comb and a polarization-maintaining pulse interleaver
• Advanced noise reduction techniques for ultra-low phase noise optical-to-microwave division with femtosecond fiber combs
• Optimizing the linearity in high-speed photodiodes
• 10 GHz Generation with Ultra-Low Phase Noise via the Transfer Oscillator Technique
• Long-term Stabilization of Fiber Laser Using Phase-locking Technique with Ultra-low Phase Noise and Phase Drift